Invent your own. We think the guy on his knees is looking for the
Archives for November 2005
SIMONE! SIMONE!
She came. Der Standard complained that her “creative method” was “often inflated” and that her “extreme agility and dynamics” made her seem, “in gesture,” like a “hyperactive flight controller [who] rages, pushes, presses herself into the music, as if her art were a constant boxing match, a musical sports trainer.” As promised, a li’l somethin’ […]
TRUE GORE
More firebrand than elder statesman, Gore Vidal at 80 is proof that celebrity may not be such a bad thing. As “America’s most visible radical public intellectual,” to quote Doug Ireland’s description of him, Vidal has been exploiting his calculated celebrity “to explain to a large public the insidious effects of America’s domination by a […]
NOT NICE EITHER
We hope you didn’t miss know-nothing column about “French gangsta rap” and hip-hop culture in re: the suburban French riots. (The column, posted Thursday, is hidden behind the TimesSelect subscription wall, hélas, but you’ll get his drift from the critique.) Also, in re: the Evangelical theme park Leon Freilich offers this verse commentary:
NASTY BUT NECESSARY
We hesitate to use the infamous Goering remark about deceitful leaders and the ease with which they’re able to mislead a nation into war while denouncing their critics as unpatriotic, not only because it’s already been seen many times but because it draws a very nasty comparison between 21st-century America and the Nazi Germany of […]
WHERE JESUS WALKED
Will Mel Gibson cut the ribbon? American Evangelicals are to unveil plans for a $60-million theme park in the Holy Land. But
EARLY CONCEPT
A forerunner of performance art? “Company of Pianos”] is that of the huge bonfire on the beach of Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1904, when a thousand square pianos were burned to a crisp. The main manufacturers got together to put on this show in order to declare the “square” dead. That quote, from a
STORMY WEATHER
“Zut alors!”
IT TAKES A WOMAN
We see that ABC News: Arts and Entertainment, has has a gig to guest-conduct the 99.99999% all-male Vienna Philharmonic in a concert this coming weekend (which will make her the first woman ever to do so). (See the Postscript.) CIRCLE JERKS, our recent item about the orchestra’s sexism, Rodgers wonders “whether [the orchestra’s] long-standing critics […]
TOP OF THE SAND HEAP
In re: Scroll to the postscript. — TSoT EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
GIVING GOOD HEAD
We like the way the Los Angeles Times put it, with all eight “No”s, though you’d never know from the photo what happened: No, No, No, No, No, No, No, No Schwarzenegger ‘Sequel’ Couldn’t Captivate Voters — Tireless Staff of Thousands EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
MR. JONES, MEET MR. FISK
Do you want to know what’s happening, Mr. Jones? Do you really want to know? Then tune in to Robert Fisk this morning. “You know?” he quotes a CIA officer, “Torture works.” In an interview on Democracy Now!, Fisk, who may be the most intrepid, most illuminating reporter working in Iraq and the Middle East, […]
CHEMICAL COUPLING
If the British Parliament passes a We’re told this diagram, which illustrates “a reaction involving two inorganic molecules,” is from “an entirely serious article” in the journal actual formulation means. Could it possibly be erotic? — Tireless Staff of Thousands EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
SPEECHLESS
Prompted, we believe, by the posting of VPO Watch, an advocacy project of the media coverage of the Vienna Philharmonic and the status of women will find it invaluable. — Tireless Staff of Thousands EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
NOT US
“We do not torture,” the I pledge allegiance to the flog Of the United States of Cheney And to the tortures for which he stands, One nation, with me as trainee.
WATTS GOING ON?
How do you say “Burn, Baby, Burn” in French? And which would you believe, Doug Ireland’s “France Has an Underclass, but Its Roots Are Still Shallow”? Did we really have to ask? Ireland messages: U.S. press coverage of the youth rebellion in France’s ghettos hasn’t done a very good job of portraying the reasons for […]
CIRCLE JERKS
Eight years ago, the all-male Vienna Philharmonic agreed to open its doors to women for the first time since it was founded, in 1842. Has it lived up to that agreement? In a word, no. These guys are still playing with themselves. Despite official promises and pronouncements, and the brief hiring of a female harpist […]